Mea Culpa: Long Beach Not First to Have Colored Shared Lane

All Photos: bent

Last week, while reporting on the green, sharrowed travel lane in Long Beach, I wrote that to the best of my knowledge, this was the first lane of this type in America.  Thanks to commenter Dan Bergenthal, we discovered that Salt Lake City, UT announced their colored, sharrowed, lane in September of 2008.  Funding for the colored lanes comes from an FHWA bicycle safety pilot program.  Reports on the effects of these lanes will be completed in the fall of this year.

If these pictures, available after the jump, are any indication, we can expect the lane in Long Beach to look a little worn in the coming months but still make a clear statement about the rights and duties of cyclists and drivers on our streets. 

A special thanks to “bent” and “Dick Hussein Trickle” for taking their Friday lunch break to take some pictures for us.  If anyone out there has pictures of or experiences with colored, shared lanes from elsewhere in the country please leave a note in the comments section or email me at damien@streetsblog.org.

Signage makes clear that cyclists have full use of lane.

Shared lane converts to bike lane.